Good old age: At the Maayan Hayeshua Hospital in Bnei Brak, Mrs. Reisel Shoshana Ovitz from Kiryat Vizhnitz died last night (Monday) in the city, and she is 105. Ovitz – who survived the damned Holocaust – became famous about a year and a half ago, when she asked for all her descendants to gather for her 104th birthday. With her for the Thanksgiving prayer at the Western Wall.
Ovitz’s family members then responded to the difficult logistical task. Almost all of her descendants – about 400 in number, from Israel and around the world, up to the fifth generation – came to the Western Wall. The significance of the extraordinary family reunion – as a symbolic stamp of victory over the Nazi oppressor – did not go unnoticed by the hundreds present, all observant of Torah and mitzvos, who could not hide their great excitement.
One of Owitz’s grandchildren, Meir Rosenstein, told journalist Sivan Rahav Meir about the life of her grandmother, who survived the Auschwitz extermination camp: “Before her eyes, Dr. Mengele took her mother. After the war she met Grandpa Dov, who lost his wife and four daughters in the camps. They got married and immigrated to Haifa. She worked as a seamstress and helped him run the poultry store. Now Grandma celebrated her 104th birthday, and asked for a gift: that all the descendants come together to the Western Wall. “
“It was not an easy task to organize this rare event,” granddaughter Pnini Friedman told the Walla website. “Emails, phone calls and messages started running, and it was important to reach everyone. It was only in the middle of the class that we realized the magnitude of the event. Everyone was there with tears in their eyes. It was very exciting.”